


Hungry for Love That Never Came

by Jadelyn



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mortal Jaskier | Dandelion, Unrequited Love, no beta we die like jaskier will someday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24412858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadelyn/pseuds/Jadelyn
Summary: In his final days, alone in his cottage by the sea, Jaskier reminisces about the love of his life: all that they were, and all that they never got to be.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 31
Kudos: 153





	Hungry for Love That Never Came

**Author's Note:**

> Me, writing my last fic: I know it hurts but don't worry guys, I like my angst to have a happy ending!  
> The gremlin in my brain: Hey what if you wrote a thing about Geralt finding out about Jaskier's death someday?  
> The gremlin in my brain: No you can't make Jaskier a ghost or anything. He doesn't come back. Everything just hurts.  
> Me: thanks I hate it  
> Me: *writes it anyway*
> 
> Seriously, this is going to Hurt. There is no second chapter, no sequel, no reconciliation, no happy ending. Only sadness and pain. I literally made myself cry while writing it. Consider yourselves warned.

_I remember the first time I saw him, sitting alone in that corner. I’d just finished rustling up some food for myself by annoying the locals into throwing it at me for playing the most annoying song I knew, but he hadn’t joined in. Mostly I think it was just injured pride that drove me to approach him initially - how dare the lout not respond to my finely-honed powers of irritation? - but then, ah, gods! He lifted his head and looked me in the eye and I was gone, lost._

_I counted that gut-punch a victory. Finally, I’d gotten through to the stoic mountain of a man and gotten some kind of response! Besides, it gave me the hook I needed to spin an excuse for sticking with him._

_Even then, though, I assumed it was a fairy-fire love, kindling quick, burning bright and then burning out just as quickly. I’d never known any other kind._

_The rational adult in me thinks that if I’d known what was to come, I’d have let the infatuation burn and burn out rather than adding fuel to the fire by following him._

_The poet in me knows that the pain of a true, but unrequited, love is worth far more than a life of shallow infatuations._

_If I could go back and do it again, though, there is one thing I’d change._

_I’d say it._

* * *

_I asked about his scars only once, a few weeks into our acquaintance. At the time I thought myself greatly forbearing for waiting that long to say anything, but at last the question burst out when I caught a glimpse of a particularly terrible mark on his back while we were changing out of wet clothes at an inn._

_I said, in all the innocence of youth, “That one looks like it nearly got you!”_

_He turned around and looked at me with confusion for a moment. I was annoyed, then - a not uncommon state of being for me when in the presence of that man - that he hadn’t been paying attention or couldn’t guess what I was talking about. Now, though, I recognize it for what it was: a sign that he’d relaxed his defenses a little and stopped making the same assumptions of me that he generally made of all humans._

_And then I nudged him to turn away a little and touched the scar in question, and said, “This scar.”_

_Because I had my hand on him, I could feel as well as see the tension that slammed into him, then. I’d never have described his muscles as ‘soft’ in the moment before that, but I abruptly learned the difference between Geralt’s muscles relaxed and Geralt’s muscles stiff with anger. It felt as though flesh had turned to stone under my touch._

_I pulled back, startled and feeling terribly guilty. Before I could say anything more than his name, he yanked on the fresh shirt he’d been holding, snapped out “It almost did,” and left, slamming the door behind him._

_Let me say, when that man wants to slam a door, he does it very well._

_I learned my lesson from that, at least as far as not asking about his scars. I didn’t understand why until much later, though. Eventually I realized that where I saw them as signs of courage and strength and survival, the legacy of heroic deeds, he just saw one more thing marking him as different, monstrous._

_Broken._

_And all for the sake of folk who despised him. Folk who might ask about those scars out of morbid curiosity, eager for a scary story to shiver over, but who wouldn’t care about the man who bore them, or what he’d suffered for the sake of that story._

_When I understood that, I knew I wanted to share with him the way I saw them. The way I saw_ him. _But I knew I couldn’t ask again; I never wanted him to react to my touch like that ever again._

_Instead, I began making up stories about the ones I saw. I based them on some of the fights I’d actually seen, or on what he’d told me about various monsters. He was always happy to talk about monster lore with me, it was one of the few ways I could reliably get an actual conversation from him, so even when I’d only actually seen him fight a handful of creatures I knew enough about a dozen more to work them into song._

_The first time I debuted one, I was shaking so badly I kept missing parts of chords. Not for fear of the audience’s reaction, by then I was skilled enough to predict and read the room and I knew they were taking it well. No, I wanted so badly for Geralt to understand why I’d written the song as I had and what I meant by it that it made me shake like a boy at his first recital. I scarcely dared glance his way during that song, but at the end of it I couldn’t help myself and looked over at him._

_He met my gaze and his eyes were soft in a way I’d not seen before that. He vouchsafed me the smallest smile, imperceptible to those who hadn’t made a study of his beautiful face, and even lifted his tankard to me a tiny bit before he drank. Not a word was spoken, then or later, but then he never really needed words to communicate with someone who was willing to learn his language. He told me then, without words, that he understood what I was doing and why, and that he...well, appreciation might be a bit too strong of a reading, but at the least he didn’t mind me doing it._

_I’ve always treasured all the smiles I’ve managed to coax from him, but that one is still one of my favorites._

* * *

_I was so, so furious with him after the striga incident. He could’ve died! He almost did die, in fact! And all because he was trying to save the monster instead of simply killing her. Which was just so very like him that it almost made me more angry rather than less._

_Because he survived, that time, but what about the next time? And there would be a next time, of that I had no doubt, because the great soft-hearted idiot never met a human in need who he wouldn’t risk his own life to save._

_And I knew why, and I understood it, as much as I could ever truly understand anything about that man. He valued their lives, their safety, sometimes even simply their comfort over his own life._

_But I always wanted to ask, what about me? Even if you’d place so little value on your own life, could you not value my love for you, and my pain and grief if you had died?_

_I never did ask. Always too afraid of the answer. But sometimes, now, I wonder what he might have said if I had?_

* * *

_I grew more and more love-stricken with each year that passed. I had always chased other loves for a night or two (maybe a few weeks or months for the really special ones), but at some point I began chasing them not for their own sake, but on the possibility that they might overtake Geralt’s place in my heart and grant me reprieve._

_It never worked. It was almost worse when we were apart; when I followed some lovely person to their rooms for an evening knowing that come morning I’d be back at Geralt’s side, it soothed something in me. I could focus on my partner entirely, lose myself in the sight and feel and sounds of a new person, savor them like the delicacy they were. Because I knew where I would be the next day. I wasn’t missing him._

_But when we were apart, oh! Every lover I took, no matter how comely in their own right, was but a stand-in for the one I really wanted. I could gaze into eyes of grass green, sky blue, deepest brown, and see only gold in my mind. Run my fingers through ebony curls or scarlet waves and remember purest white instead. It was even worse when I was with a man, for then the physique, too, could become naught but a backdrop for my fantasies. My mind’s eye would broaden the shoulders, place the scars where they should be, deepen the voice._

_I think perhaps it was because there was never a certainty of our reuniting. We rarely if ever made actual plans to meet again after time apart, relying instead on fate, or chance, or merely my dogged persistence and willingness to badger every single person in every single village I encountered for news of a witcher passing through until I caught his trail. And of course, with the dangers inherent in his work, who’s to say that he might not have fallen to some monster in the meantime anyway?_

_So when we would part, I would miss him so terribly, and fear so intensely that I might not see him again, that I could not banish his image from my mind. Deeply unfair to those I bedded in those times, perhaps, but I could not help myself, neither in the bedding nor the remembering._

* * *

_I nearly found my respite with the Countess de Stael, for a little while. A lovely woman, quick of word and sharp of wit as well as stunningly beautiful and passionate. Nigh a match for me, she seemed for a time. I thought to bury myself in her and forget all about bloody Geralt of bloody Rivia._

_But even with her, I could never fully escape the specter that haunted my heart. When I could keep busy, press myself close to my lady’s side, I could hold him at bay - but it is impossible to keep oneself busy enough, or in company enough, never to find a quiet moment alone with one’s own mind. And in those quiet moments, who should arise once more from my memories but my beloved wolf?_

_When Geralt later asked me if I had sung to her before she left me, I reacted with even more theatrics than usual not because I was truly that offended - really, if I were to waste time being offended each time he’d insulted my singing, I’d never have gotten anything else done in my life - but because it struck far too close to the truth. At which point my choices were to break down in tearful confession or distract us both with outrage. Outrage seemed far safer._

_I tried not to sing of him in her household. It seemed rude. I tried to write new compositions, avoiding all mention or even thought of him. But despite my best efforts, even my odes to my lady had hints of metaphor that, if you knew how to look just right, were about Geralt. I simply couldn’t excise him entirely no matter how hard I tried._

_Unfortunately, the lady was clever and perceptive enough to look just right and see it._

_I can’t blame her for sending me away after that. Even though it did set off the sequence of events that would eventually ruin my life._

* * *

_He was always a man to show his feelings in actions, not words. The awkward stiltedness of “we...won’t let that happen” when Chireadan said the djinn’s curse might kill me might have hurt my feelings, had I known him less well. If not for the way he had put me up on Roach and set her running for the nearest town, if not for the demand in his voice when he called for a doctor, if not for the way he refused to accept Chireadan’s answer about the mage and insisted on dragging the information from him. By those, I knew that whatever he did or didn’t say, he did care._

_In my darker moments, I’ve let myself wonder if it was truly caring, or if it was simply guilt and his need to right his own wrongs that drove him, since he was the one who unwittingly set the djinn upon me in the first place. But I flatter myself that I know his voice well, and could discern the difference between obligation and genuine worry._

_Not to mention, I don’t think even he would offer a mage “whatever the price” to fix something he’d done wrong, unless he truly cared about the outcome. I don’t think he knew I heard that, or that I was aware enough to notice it if I did. But I was, and I did, and I’ve never forgotten it. Despite all the misery that sprang from that day, I treasure it in an odd sort of way for the memory of “fix it and I’ll pay you, whatever the price.”_

_Still, aside from that, a pretty shit day. Especially since Chireadan wouldn’t let me stay and watch, the prude._

* * *

_Ah, the mountain._

_What even is there to be said of that day, anymore?_

_It was the end. The end of everything, the end of dreams, the end of a life I had treasured._

_The night before, when I sought to confess my feelings to him, I couched my words in poetry, in invitation, rather than speaking directly. My own fault, that. I was too much a coward to speak plainly with him. Might things have been different, if I had? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I nearly drove myself mad wondering, the first year afterward. But there’s no way to go back, no way to know, and wondering gains nothing._

_And then the next day, his outburst…_

_Each word drove a new crack into my heart, shoved the chisel deeper, until he delivered the final blow and it shattered entirely. “If life could give me one blessing…”_

_Did he mean it? Who’s to say? Perhaps he did. Perhaps he was merely lashing out in his own pain, as a wounded animal might sink its teeth into the hand reaching to free its paw from the trap._

_Most of the time, I choose to believe it was the latter. But even if it was, he never sought to reverse it, and perhaps that’s a message, too. Even if he didn’t mean it, he was still content to let it stand._

_Or just too stubborn or too wrapped up in his own guilt to try. Hard to say, with him._

_I couldn’t bear to travel anymore, after that day. Even the trip from there to Oxenfurt was torture. I felt as though I were trying to relearn how to function after losing a limb. How many times a day did I start to turn and say something to him, only to be reminded anew of his absence? The nights were the worst, the silence, the loneliness._

_At Oxenfurt, at least, it was a place not haunted by the ghosts of his presence. No, only my own heart was haunted, and that was more than enough. So I accepted the job there, and it was a satisfying enough life, in its way. Lovers aplenty, when I wished for them, work that suited me, colleagues who admired me._

_And if I still dreamed of white hair and golden eyes and strong hands, no one else needed to know._

* * *

_Now, here I am. I made it to the coast, though I came alone. I will live out my days here, lulled by the waves as I write my memoirs. Not this, though. He features in them, of course, because how could he not? But there, in that manuscript, it is the White Wolf I speak of. A being more character, more myth than man._

_But now, I feel the illness progressing, I know my days are drawing to a close at last, and that is not who I wish to remember for the time I have left._

_Here, now, I wish only to remember my friend, Geralt._

* * *

“There is nothing?”

The girl smiled apologetically. “Forgive me, master witcher, I fear not. Master Julian was quite specific regarding the distribution of his effects. We’ve already enacted his wishes to the best of our ability. Much of his writing went to Oxenfurt; perhaps you could try there and see if they would be willing to part with anything?”

Despite his best efforts, Geralt felt his hands tighten into fists, tension coiling across his shoulders. It was all he could do to keep his grunt of acknowledgment neutral. It wasn’t her fault, really, but grief is rarely a rational creature.

A lesson he had once learned, to his detriment, upon a mountaintop some thirty years ago.

He was nearly out of the little coastal village, about to mount up and ~~flee~~ ride away, when he heard the shout behind him.

“Sir! Witcher, wait!”

He turned back as the girl, running after him, slowed once she knew she had his attention. She approached, breathing hard from her run through town, and thrust out a hand toward him.

For a moment he couldn’t breathe, as he stared at the slim volume she proffered. Black leather, with the image of a wolf tooled onto the front of it. Feeling as though his hands belonged to someone else, he reached out and took it.

She was talking, as he turned it over in his hands, staring. “Forgive me, sir, I’d forgotten about this. As I mentioned, Master Julian left detailed instructions for us, but this piece wasn’t mentioned anywhere. I’m not sure he intended for it to be found at all, to be honest. It was hidden behind the false back of one of his desk drawers, that I only found by accident. There’s no title, no...it seemed to be a journal. We didn’t read it, but we weren’t sure what to do with it either, so we set it aside and until just now I’d forgotten we had it.” Her breath and heart rate had mostly gotten back to normal. “It’s yours, if you want it.”

“I…” he swallowed hard, had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Yes. I do. Thank you. How much?”

But the girl shook her head, smiling sadly. “No charge, sir. It’s not for sale. I think he would have wanted you to have it.”

Startled, he met her eyes for a moment. The gentle sympathy in them nearly undid his control then and there. At last he managed to simply say, “Thank you,” again before turning back to Roach to mount up and leave.

Her hand on his arm stopped him. “Forgive my boldness, sir, but - you seem greatly affected by the news of Master Julian’s passing. I’m sorry for your loss. I hope this at least may bring you some comfort.” She hesitated, as though considering whether to say more, then added, “His cottage still stands empty. Turn off just after the standing stones, it’s perhaps half a mile on from there. We put up a small marker-stone at the cliff where he used to sit. In case you wanted to... to visit, before you go.”

Before he could thank her a third time, she turned and walked away.

He mounted one-handed, rode one-handed, still clutching the small book. It felt as though it were burning his fingers to touch; it felt as though it would burn worse to let it go, even just to put it away in the saddlebags for a little while until he reached the cottage.

The scent struck him like a blow the moment he stepped through the cottage door. The pinewood of the lute, mingled with the acrid scent of ink and smoothed over with a honey-like sweetness. Even now, so many years gone by, there was a part of him that relaxed instantly upon scenting it. It was a scent that meant home, companionship, safety.

Love.

But it was faded, despite the strength of the initial impression, and adulterated by other scents, left by other people who had been and gone since last Jaskier had left this place. Trying not to think about the reason for that, Geralt followed the scent to where it was strongest.

The linens had been replaced; they bore no trace of Jaskier. But the bed itself, the desk and chair nearby - he’d been here long enough, used them often enough, that his scent was indelibly imprinted on them. Removing his gloves, Geralt trailed bare fingertips over the wood, imagining he could feel the echoes of Jaskier’s presence still. He could picture him there: asleep on the bed, sitting at the desk scratching away at some composition or other, plucking out some new tune on his beloved lute.

At that thought, tears began to well up, because Geralt knew the images in his mind were wrong. He had never seen Jaskier as an old man. Instead he was picturing the bard as he’d known him, in his prime, someone who had never lived here at all. Someone who existed now only in his memory. Swallowing hard against the rising grief, he spun on his heel and left, unable to bear it a second longer.

The girl had told truly. There was a stone rising from the ground near the cliff’s edge, a little ways from the house. Only then, kneeling beside the simple pillar carved with the image of a clutch of buttercups, did Geralt finally allow himself to open the little book and read.

* * *

_My dearest wolf,_

_I doubt you will ever see this. You have no reason to come to this town, to find my cottage, to search out this hidden book, or to read all the way through it to this last page if you were to find it._

_And perhaps this is my own folly speaking and nothing more, to think you might even bother to remember me by now. Your life spans so far beyond mine that a companion of a few years, even decades, is probably nothing more lasting than a spark flung from the fire, burned out before it even reaches the ground. And likely it is my own folly, too, to assume you would still care even if you do remember me._

_But if it happens that you do remember me. If it happens that you do still care._

_I would simply have you know that I loved you, dearly and with the whole of my heart, from the day we met until the day I died. Words alone, no matter how harsh, could not rip that love from my heart, even though they tore you from my life. I never, ever stopped loving you._

_And if it matters at all, if you have ever wondered, if you wanted to hear it, know too that I forgive you. I would never wish for you to bear any guilt on my account, dear heart - oh, my love, I forgave you long ago. I would beg of you to forgive yourself, too, though I know that is a far harder task to set you._

_All I want - all I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy, even were it not with me. I hope you have found that happiness somehow._

_If not, if you would honor my memory, that is all I ask: that you seek out and find happiness, Geralt, whatever that may mean to you._

_All my love,_  
_Jaskier_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for suffering with me. I promise I have other, happier stories I'm working on and will share with you all when they're done!


End file.
